How to Auto-Increment Document Reference Numbers with Power Automate

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Use Power Automate to auto-increment your SharePoint lists and libraries for the next file or request you need recorded!
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0:00 Intro
0:46 Demo
1:30 SharePoint Environment Setup
3:34 Building the Flow
9:55 Conclusion
Presenter: Matt Kohn

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Опубликовано:

8 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 36

@averynight2817 2 года назад

I used your steps to make auto increment in my sharepoint list and it works!! Thank you so much!

@BulbDigital 2 года назад

We love comments like this! Thanks Avery, glad we could help!

@benjamincousin5913 Год назад

Great content Matt, thanks a lot for your precious help. Greetings from a french man in Chile ! :)

@BulbDigital Год назад

Thanks Benjamin! Hello from up north :)

@richardwaldron1684 2 месяца назад

Amazing, just the functionality I was looking for a SharePoint migration project. Thanks for sharing

@BulbDigital 2 месяца назад

Glad it was helpful!

@janvanniekerk6489 2 года назад

This is great! I also now managed to build a flow with concat using a specific prefix and the SP allocated doc ID. But I would like to see how to deal with files where check-out/check-in is a mandatory requirement for files with the result that newly uploaded files are automatically checked out when they land.

@BulbDigital 2 года назад

Great, glad to hear it! Newly updated files should be checked out automatically if check in/out is enabled. Is it behaving differently for you?

@donnavarghese790 7 месяцев назад

This is a great video. This has helped me a lot. I just want to know for multiple files are uploaded- how can we do this when multiple documents are being uploaded at the same time.

@BulbDigital 7 месяцев назад

The only issue I see in multiple files being uploaded at once is if the flow is executing at the same time. If that is your concern, you can turn on Concurrency Control for the trigger and limit the number of concurrent runs to 1. This will effectively stop the trigger from executing until the previous trigger is complete.

@maevenhirt1998 2 года назад

Bring on more content!

@BulbDigital 2 года назад

Will do, thanks Maeven!

@pavelkrasnov2786 2 года назад

Thank you for this video! I've several categories of files in my document library and for each category I want to keep a separate index report. How can I fix my flow if there is no one line with 0 in the sheet, but several? Expression with first() will no longer fit.The titles in list will correspond to the categories of files.

@BulbDigital 2 года назад

Hi Pavel, we have done this before by adding a category column and then adding an odata filter to the SharePoint query to only get the row with the category. Another option would be to use one flow per category, then add the filter into the trigger conditions for each flow.

@TRP-dn4fv 11 месяцев назад

Could i use this flow to generate an incremented number such as ACC00001?

@BulbDigital 11 месяцев назад

Yes! In your flow that gets the next current number from the incrementing list you could put it into into a variable and then concatenate the number value with a department acronym like 'Accounting' or maybe dates from another list. You may have to pay special attention to the syntax (some values like number properties are treated differently from string values). We didn't dive that deep in this video but it is possible and other users have posted articles on how to parse the syntax to put it all together within the flow.

@kellymcmunn1830 7 месяцев назад

Great concept! How do I keep the number from changing when the file is updated outside of SP, reuploaded, and overwritten? Use the checkout feature? Also, how can I assign numbers to documents that are already in a document library? TIA!

@BulbDigital 7 месяцев назад

Glad it helped! As long as someone doesn't delete the file and upload it again it shouldn't update. So just make sure the users are using the "overwrite" functionality.

@joaquinromero792 Год назад

Thanks for this guide! I'm creating a similar flow where I'm creating unique IDs for Forms submissions which autopopulate an excel file. The ID is the date and the number combined together (for ex. 1132023001) and the incrementing works fine but I'd like the numbering to go back to 001 on a new day (1132023001 1132023002, 1142023001) . Any tips on how I could do this? Thanks!

@BulbDigital Год назад

One instance I think you could manage it: Ultimately you're managing a list of numbers to write and increment onto each file you upload. You could have a trigger condition that checks if the date has passed since the last flow ran and update that date portion of the current number in the list before applying it to files in the rest of the flow.

@hanishvaitla 11 месяцев назад

What if I wanna maintai two seperate folder structure with seperate numbering.. Do we need to maintain those seperate number lists ?

@BulbDigital 11 месяцев назад

Hey thanks for the question! It's possible that you could accomplish this simply by adding another metadata column (folder) to the Number List. Then when a document is created, you could retrieve the next number from the Number List based on folder and service area. Of course what this also means is that if you have two documents with the same service area in two different folders, you could end up with those two documents having the same numbers. You might say, they're in different folders, so that doesn't matter. However, you may need to account for the scenario where someone moves those documents into the same folder. Is it okay for them to have the same number in that scenario? Ultimately you can do exactly what you're asking, but the most important question to answer is "How should my metadata numbering scheme work?"

@NielsHamminga Год назад

I have a quick question. WIth the method you are showing, is it possible to reset the number. I have to make a ticketing system where the number added to the ticket can reset every month

@BulbDigital Год назад

Great question Niels and thanks for watching 😁 You can certainly update an index/tracking number from that list. I would recommend probably creating a whole other flow that you can automate separately and schedule it to run monthly rather than trying to include it somewhere in your original numbering flow. Keep in mind you could be managing multiple different numbers for different flows right within that one numbers list. Play around with it!

@NielsHamminga Год назад

@@BulbDigital Had the same idea. Thanks for thinking along!

@rianschoeman3033 2 месяца назад

But what if there are multiple sub-folders in the document library and each document in each sub-folder needs to be updated?

@BulbDigital 2 месяца назад

Personally, I think folders stink. They make functionality like this overly complicated and they end up burying content. It's why Microsoft and a lot of innovators recommend flattening content like sites and documents - which means dropping folders altogether! In my experience any folder grouping or categorization for files in SharePoint can now be done by tagging files with metadata. It's a change for sure, but it gets you out of the sub-folder nightmare!

@tao88h Год назад

Is it possible to apply the created number to a bookmarked location on a word document created from a template? in other words; I have a word template that opens from the number library - in it I want the next sequential number to appear on every new document that our company creates.

@BulbDigital Год назад

Great question Tao, what you're referring to can be setup using Quick Parts. If you're using a document template for a specific library, then you can insert a quick part into that Word document and auto-set the field to read a column in SharePoint. In this case the flow that creates the index number assign it shortly after it's triggered by the creation/upload of a document. So you might find that the quick part doesn't read the number from the column until it's been opened a second time after the upload. support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-quick-parts-and-autotext-in-word-and-outlook-7a527697-058f-4967-b8f1-aae0774e4813#:~:text=Quick%20Parts%20Gallery.-,On%20the%20Insert%20tab%2C%20in%20the%20Text%20group%2C%20click%20Quick,find%20and%20click%20the%20selection.

@Wipeout2806 Год назад

So let's say there's 100 doc, they delete a doc number 55. Now we have numbers 1-54; (55 is missing); 56-100. There would be a gap in sequencing - 55 is missing. Is power automate able to fix this so the numbering contiues counting?

@BulbDigital Год назад

This is a great scenario! In my example the index number is managed in that list separate from the document library where those 100 documents are stored. So deleting documents doesn't impact the next number in the sequence (after deleting document 55, the number in the list is still going to be 101 for the next uploaded document). You are correct that deleting documents ultimately leaves a gap in the numbers on the library, but some users may want that,

@harsh440378 2 месяца назад

Hi Thanks , But I have question on this .....see I already built a flow like this but problem here comes when multiple user is uploading documents at the same time let's say within 5-10 seconds it will fail to provide correct number coz it very less time frame counter get item sometimes take previous number while another parallel flow is still not have updated number ......this will definitely happen when you add document within very less time frame for example multiple user uploads doc at same time.........I have also found a solution to use concurrency control to avoid this ......but as I using approval at later stage of my flow which can take time to days to complete the flow hence I am not able to use concurrency control to avoid this.......I want a solution within the flow for my problem to avoid error in increament number while multiple user uploads doc at the same time.......pls provide solution other than concurrency control within flow

@harsh440378 2 месяца назад

Also as I said I can't wait days to get approval hence I cant use concurrency control....hence my increment counter will not increase till I get approval in case I use concurrency control to 1 .....and I don't want that ....can you provide a error free solution within flow

@BulbDigital 2 месяца назад

It sounds like your requirements are pretty complex. You might want to consider using other Power Platform tools like Dataverse instead of SharePoint. If you really need to stick with SharePoint, concurrency is your best solution. To resolve your problem with subsequent approvals, I would recommend you treat the increment process as the first and only process that runs when the item is created. Any approval process would run separately when the item changes and has a a "state" of ready for approval or something. This way you have two completely completely different flows that work independently.

@islor1 2 года назад

Is this approach likely to lead to a race condition? Or does Power Automate prevent that?

@BulbDigital 2 года назад

We traditionally use one of two solutions to the "race condition" issue. 1. We use a status or the reference number field to stop any race condition. For example if the reference number if populated we can either end the flow or using a trigger condition the flow will never run. 2. We don't talk about it in this video, but there is a different way to update list items that will never trigger the flow. This type of update is usually used for migrations and data integration, but can be useful for this type of change as well. To learn more you could look at robertschouten.com/2018/04/30/update-file-metadata-with-rest-api-using-validateupdatelistitem-method/ or blog.arvosys.com/2018/07/06/list-items-system-update-options-in-sharepoint-online/index.html